Song of Ireland

by Juilene Osborne-McKnight

  On the neck of each was a lunula, a huge hammered crescent of gold or silver that represented the moon, the Keeper of Time. As the moon rose higher and whitened in its arc, the lunula reflected her face, so that a dark crescent winked and flickered between each oak.

  I stilled myself, inhaled the breath of the forest—oak leaves and pine needles, mint and onion, fecund life, wet with promise. Here was the smell of abundance, the pungent odor of forever. Awe caught at my breath.

  Just at that moment, the moon approached zenith. The drum began, one of the acolytes beating on the bodhran in deep, measured tones. Another drum answered from the far side of the circle. Back and forth the drums spoke.

  We began to chant with them, the deep thrumming of the male druii counterparted with the light voices of our sisters.

  “Give thanks to Creation.

  Buiochas le cruthú.

  Oh, be not afraid.

  Na’ bi’odh eagla ort.

  Give thanks to Creation.

  Buiochas le cruthú.

  Wait upon the Light.

  Fanacht le Solas.”

  Back and forth we chanted as the moon crested. Now An Scail approached the eldest of the druii, a lighted pine-pitch torch in her hand. I saw her ancient brother limned in firelight as she tipped the torch toward his own. It caught and flared with a whooshing sound. One by one she moved among us; one by one the torches lighted. As they did, I could see clearly each druid, white-haired and dark, male and female, standing small between the ancient, towering trees, a pail of water by each priestly side as precaution for protecting the wise old oaks, who bore our prayers skyward.

  “Buiochas le cruthú,” An Scail whispered to each acolyte, who whispered in repeat as the torches lighted. She reached me last, her torch tipping forward to ignite mine. “Buiochas le cruthú,” she whispered, and I repeated the chant. Suddenly, her ancient hand reached out, and I felt her delicate fingers on my cheek.

  “Ah, wondrous, Amergin,” she whispered. “Most wondrous. You weep at the presence of the Sacred. Here in the Sacred White Circle, you are truly blessed among us, for Creation has made its full Wonder known to you and you have wept for the Presence of God.”

  I bowed my head in awe.

  Silence moved around the circle then. Drums and chanting stopped. A wind picked up and whispered through the forest top. Far beyond the grove I could hear the wash and drum of the sea. Our torches burned and tiny sparks ascended toward the stars. We were silent for a long time, until the moon passed zenith and began its retreat to the horizon.

  An Scail led us in procession out of the Sacred Circle to the Druid Broch, a stone tower just beyond the trees. There we extinguished our torches and sat in a circle around the lodge fire, the sacredness of the moment still holding us in silence.

  At last, An Scail stepped forward with Uncle Ith’s oak curve in her hand.

  “We have received a message from our brother Ith,” she said, “who has journeyed for many months to Inisfail. We ask the gods for wisdom that we might unlock that message on this most sacred night.

  “Amergin.” She beckoned in my direction.

  I stepped to the center of the circle and took the proffered curve in hand.

  I tipped it toward the firelight, first the plain side, then the side with its ogham incisings. There, among the stick words, was something new, something that had not been there when An Scail and I rowed out to sea. It looked like a triangle, slightly raised from the wood. Deep in its surface were spirals, twined together as vines.

  “Here, Honored Teacher,” I said, handing the curve toward her.

  “Tell us what you see,” she commanded.

  “I see a raised shape, three-sided, like the pyramids of Egypt.” It crossed my mind that perhaps the druii did not know the pyramids, but they said nothing, and I remembered that their wisdom was old and well traveled.

  “And it was not there when first we found the ogham stick?”

  “It was not.”

  “Stand before the fire then and press upon the shape.”

  I turned and faced the fire. I pressed the little shape with my thumb. There was a slicing of the air, sharp and white. It mimicked what I had seen from the vision circle. For a moment, the fire looked viscous behind the white light, slow and gleaming like a waterfall. Then, suddenly, there was a woman, most beautiful. She stood encased in blue light at the center of the flame; it seemed she stood upon the flames themselves. Her hair was copper, long, curling in wave after wave. Her skin was milky white. Only her eyes seemed somehow unlike ours, huge, almond-shaped orbs, blue and gray as the wild sea beneath the cliffs. Though she looked at us directly, I had the strange impression that she did not see us at all.

  “I send greetings to An Scail, the Shadow, and to Amergin, son of Mil, from Ith of the Sacred Circle. He dwells among us here in … Inisfail and is well.” Her voice was mellifluous and low.

  There was a pause; the form of the woman dipped and seemed to shrink; it crackled out of shape and then re-formed itself. Her voice began again as though it echoed, as though it came from a deep well.

  “I am Eriu of the Three Sisters.”

  Behind her, two other forms shifted into place, female, though they seemed shadowy and insubstantial, as if they stood in a place of little light.

  “These are my sisters Banba and Fodla. We are of the Tribe of the Danu, the Children of the Braid.

  “Ith has been among us and has told us of the desire of the Galaeci to journey to Inisfail. We are not a warrior race, though, like you, we are journeyers. We have spoken of Ith. Of us, Ith alone will tell you. You must trust the story he brings you. He has treated us with honor. We return him to you with honor. May he come safely back to you.”

  The woman sputtered like a candle in wind. Her form seemed to shrink and thin until it looked like a single blue flame. With a popping sound, she vanished.

  I stared at the place where she had been. I pressed the little triangle with my thumb again but no form emerged. I stared down at the little pyramid shape on Ith’s oak crescent.

  “Honored Teacher,” I whispered. “The pyramid is fading.”

  “She has said what she came to say,” said An Scail. “Obviously, she expects we of the druii to remember her warning.”

  “Warning?”

  “We will be welcome only as long as we come in peace.”

  “She must already have met Airioch,” I muttered, unthinking. One or two of the druids hid their mouths behind their hands.

  An Scail did not reply. She seemed deep in thought.

  “You and Skena will move with Bile into Breogam’s Tower,” she said suddenly. “We must begin the watch for Ith’s return. We will be most curious to hear of the Journey of these Children of the Braid, for something went unsaid. I will go to speak to your father.”

  One of the druids spoke from the circle. “Will you need my arm, Honored One? It is a night of much strangeness.”

  “Amergin will accompany me,” she said. “I thank you. I will fetch my cloak.”

  When she left the room for her lodge, the druid approached me. “Support her well, younger brother. The Samhain Circle wearies her vision, and we fear that her Sight will be much taxed by the events of the evening.”

  “The torches trouble her eyes?” I asked. “Or was it the message from the ogham wand?”

  “Neither,” said the druid, his head tilted sideways. He seemed to be eyeing me in surprise. “It is her vision that is taxed. An Scail is blind.”

  I held to her hard in the dark forest, all my months of study, all my pride in my hard-won knowledge, shaken to the core. How had I not known? All this time; the strangness of the silvery owl eyes. Why had I not seen?

  An Scail sensed the difference in the way I guided her. “They have told you that I am blind, have they not?”

  “I should have seen … should have known.”

  “And how?”

  “I don’t know. You asked me to describe the oak crescent. On the hill, you
kept running your hands over it. I don’t know.” I shook my head helplessly.

  “I could have seen it perfectly well myself, Amergin. I asked you to describe it for the group.”

  “How would you have seen it?”

  “With my hands. I hear more than you hear. My hands can see more than most people see with their eyes. I can smell and identify the way our wolfhounds do.”

  “So you have always been blind?”

  “No. My sight left me more than ten years ago. I could actually see the first eye go milky in my mirror, but even before then I knew that my vision was departing when I could not see the stars.”

  I stopped suddenly on the path, struck by a thought so sad that it took my breath from me. “Oh, An Scail. You could not see Ith when he returned.”

  She was silent for a long moment and her hand patted my supporting arm gently. “I see why Ith loves you so, Amergin. You think with the soul of the poet. You speak with your compassion. But do not trouble yourself. I have seen Ith’s face with my hands, but perhaps I have been given a gift, for my mind’s eye sees him as he was when he departed with your father so long ago, young and strong with his hawk nose and his long dark hair.”

  I thought of my uncle now, the thin ring of white hair, the bald pate. I said nothing at all.

  After a moment, An Scail chuckled gently.

  “You are becoming a wise man, Amergin. But now we must go to your father. There will be many preparations, and first among them, we must keep the tower light at full fire. Now be careful, for there is a great root here on the path and it will trip us both.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked in awe.

  An Scail laughed aloud. “Because it was here yesterday. And last week. And the year before.”

  12

  Scota had us seated in family groups around the fire: Eber Donn’s three wives and their children, all crying and babbling incessantly; Eber Finn and Eremon and their clans, quieter by virtue of fewer wives; Skena and Bile; Ir and Colpa.

  An Scail and me she had seated in the position of honor at the front of the room, a place which made me very uncomfortable surrounded by my elder brothers and their families.

  Scota’s servants moved among us with warm mead. They served the traditional meal of the new year, wild boar and haunch of deer steamed in fulacht fiadh, the wood- and stone-lined cooking pits that made the meat so tender that it fell from the bone; a rich seaweed soup heated in leather bags by hot stones; and a salty seaweed laver bread. Finally, they brought sticky, delicious honey-cakes, all designed to fuel us for the cold and dark half of the year—the Gaimred—that we had entered at the turning of last night’s moon.

  When the feast was finished my father stood before the company. In his blunt and soldierly way, he went directly to the heart of the matter.

  “What does it mean?” He turned his attention to An Scail and to me with a look that was as trusting as Bile’s face when he regarded Skena. For the first time, I realized that my father was a man completely composed of action, a man who acted and reacted to everything with no wavering—sudden decision, complete movement. I realized that it was no real wonder that he had wandered the world, made his decision to return to Galicia based upon the darkening of the sun. It was as though a wind shifted inside him and he turned in the way that it blew. I realized that his ability to act quickly was probably what made him so masterful a soldier that emperors and pharaohs trusted his actions. I also realized that I was cut from completely different cloth.

  An Scail stood before the company; I knew that she sensed my diffidence, my awkwardness before the whole assemblage of my clan, and I was grateful to her for assuming the burden of telling.

  Mothers hushed the children; by degrees, the central chamber of the dwelling grew quiet.

  “We have had a message,” she said; “Ith returns to us.”

  My father shouted aloud. “This is well!” he cried. “Lads, we must begin the preparations. The ships. The horses. Which of the clans will accompany us?”

  An Scail held up her hand. “There is more.” Her tone was ominous, quiet.

  Even my father sat instantly.

  “The island … Inisfail … is already occupied.”

  “That will not impede us,” said my father, cheerful and sure of himself.

  “It may,” said An Scail. “I hear in them some difference from us. Their voices sound … reedy, somehow … like the bone flutes of the cattle herders.”

  I looked up in surprise. She was right. I had not noticed the sound, because I had been so occupied with their appearance, with the strange vessel for the message. An Scail turned her attention to me.

  “Amergin,” she said quietly. “You must tell your clan what you have seen.

  I stood and cleared my throat, bringing Ceolas up with me. I had begun the tale on that night when I had seen the flash of light on the Isle of Seals. All day my mind had been composing it further: the moonlight among the oaks, the druids, the little triangle on the oaken curve, the beauty of the woman in the blue sphere of light, her sisters, the warning, the message that Ith had been treated with honor. I chanted it to them, Ceolas moving warm beneath my fingers, and when I was done, there was silence.

  CEOLAS SINGS OF STRANGENESS

  How has she sprung from the oak wand

  her gray eyes upon us,

  her very presence in the room

  but not among us?

  On this night of moonlight

  our wisdom keepers see her, hear her,

  though she be worlds away.

  Who is the woman in the oak wand,

  she who returns our uncle to us,

  who sends her message to Seal Isle,

  wings it to us in a flash of light?

  Return, Uncle, for we would know

  the origin of strangeness,

  the tale of these,

  who travel in the wood.

  At last, it was my brother Eber Finn who broke the silence. “What should we do, Amergin?” he asked.

  I felt a strange lightness spin through me, a kind of giddy surprise, followed by a weight that settled on my shoulders like a heavy woolen cloak. I cleared my throat.

  “An Scail has asked that Skena and I move into the tower. She requests that we keep the tower fires burning high that Ith and our brothers can see their way home. Beyond that, I think that we should wait. The woman Eriu said that Ith alone would bring us the knowledge of her people, of their journey. We must hear that knowledge before we decide to journey to Inisfail.”

  “This is wise,” said Scota. “Mil, I think that we should do as our son has suggested.”

  My father nodded. “Thank you for your wisdom, Amergin,” he said. He came to where I was standing and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good man.”

  “Amergin?”

  “Mmm?”

  I came up from a deep slumber, to the long threads of her hair fanned across my chest, to her lips tickling the side of my ear. I turned toward her, as I did each morning, traced my hand along the sweet curve of her cheek, the soft whiteness of her breast. I loved the sound of her breath catching at my smallest touch.

  “The night watch has left the tower and Bile has descended to fetch the breakfast. We have a little time.”

  “Ah, really? Time for what? What do you suggest, red woman?”

  She laughed and swatted at me. “I suggest that you love me.”

  “You suggest that every morning.”

  Her face flushed. “I am emboldened, then, because you take my suggestion every morning.”

  I rolled up then and over her, bracing myself on my arms. She stroked them gently, her hands sliding down from my shoulders.

  “I must be easily suggestible.”

  “Well, you are a poet after all. The smallest words suggest large purpose.” She smiled, veiled her eyes. I watched the delicate lashes fan against her cheeks.

  “Large purpose is it, love? Who is the poet now?”

  She laughed and pushed against me,
but her back was already arching.

  We had moved into Breogam’s Tower, Skena and Bile and I. And though I had but nineteen years, I was at last fully a man. Wisdom singer for the clan. Husband to Skena. Father for all purposes to Bile. Skena and I kept the fire in the lightkeeper’s room just above our own chamber burning so high that our room below was warm, even though it was winter. On the nights when the watch was mine, she kept me company, humming along to my harpsongs, sometimes joining me at the window, our arms twined around each other, our faces illumined by the light from the sea, our watch punctuated by small kisses and sweet sighs until at last we could bear it no more and wrapped ourselves together for the briefest of couplings before resuming the watch.

  On nights when others of the tribe took the watch, we slept folded together in our chamber below. Though it was furnished simply with a sleeping platform wide enough for two, a smaller platform for Bile, a table, and four curved Roman chairs that some long ago Galaeci had acquired in a trade, for me that chamber in the tower was and will remain forever the room of complete abundance.

  Even when we were apart, tending to the business of the clan or to Bile, we remained tethered to each other by an invisible thread of shared knowledge.

  As for Bile, he ran up and down the tower stairs like the mountain goats of Greece, climbing and descending so many times a day that his legs grew strong and tireless.

  He took to playing with our baby brother Ir, who had upon him now four years. This made Bile, with his own nine years, the big brother. No matter to Ir that Bile possessed only one arm and could speak only three sounds. To Ir, Bile was an object of worship. For his part, Bile was tirelessly patient in helping the baby to run and to learn to draw. In Ir’s adoring gaze, Bile grew confident and happy. When Ir began to imitate Bile’s speech, articulating his own wants as “Ah, ah, ah,” Bile stopped vocalizing entirely and taught Ir his own system of gestures and signs. Somehow, Bile’s strong body, his silence, and his obvious care for his brother made him much less terrifying to the clan, and I noticed that one or two of them began to learn his signs and to return his conversations with their own hands.